In an interview to promote his second memoir, "Love Life," Lowe tells The New York Times magazine that good-looking people have a hard time of it in Hollywood. Only now, he says, is he scoring the important roles his looks didn't allow him previously.

"There's this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people, that they can't be in pain or they can't have rough lives or be deep or interesting," Lowe says in the magazine. "They can't be any of the things that you long to play as an actor. I'm getting to play those parts now and loving it. When I was a teen idol, I was so goddamn pretty I wouldn't have taken myself seriously."

One of those parts he's talking about has to be playing Drew Peterson, the former Chicago-area police officer who was sentenced to prison for murder of his third ex-wife, Kathleen Savio. Lowe uglied up to play him in the 2012 Lifetime movie, "Drew Peterson: Untouchable."

Lowe, now 50, says pretty people aren't considered for comedies, either, despite having starred most recently in NBC's "Parks and Recreation."

"Again, there's a historical bias that good-looking people are not funny," he says.